Communication between various computing devices (e.g., personal computers, server computers, mobile devices) is increasingly commonplace in a number of network environments, such as, e.g., the Internet and corporate intranets to name only a few examples. Often, these computing devices are configured for communication in accordance with preferred or even required protocols. Traditionally when a computing device attempts to engage in communication with another computing device using an unrecognized protocol, an error message is sent to the first device, and further communication typically cannot proceed.
As an illustration, a commercial web site may require a user's computer to comply with a particular protocol or data format before the user is granted access to the payment web pages. For example, the commercial website may require that incoming messages be encoded according to a particular encryption scheme for security purposes, or that incoming messages be formatted using a particular compression scheme to facilitate efficient transaction processing. If the user's computer is not equipped to abide by the specified protocol or data format, the user's computer generally receives an error notification, such as a “400” error code defined in the Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP). Typically, such error notifications are not very informative or helpful for a user to remedy the error, if possible, and continue communicating with the commercial website.
In addition, over time, as new protocols and data formatting techniques emerge, not all computing devices will necessarily have adopted the latest protocols and data formatting techniques. Thus, there will typically always be some differences between the protocols and/or data formats used by some computing devices and the protocols and/or data formats used by other computing devices. However, although some computing devices may not be able to apply the newest protocols or data formats, they typically can communicate using some other protocols or data formats. Unfortunately, a traditional computing device does not typically have the ability to identify the different protocols and/or data formats used by another computing device, and adapt, if possible, to the different protocols and/or data formats.
Such communication problems can be exacerbated when one or more computing devices are present in the path between two devices attempting to communicate. In such a case, all of the computing devices may have particular requirements that must be met by the other computing devices. Thus, any mismatch in data protocol or format between adjacent computing devices in the communication path can lead to a break-down in communication.